


The Last of the Summer's Fireflies

by flyingllamas



Series: Lost [3]
Category: BEN Drowned, Creepypasta - Fandom, Lost Silver - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Gen, Violence, all of them - Freeform, all the feels, ben's a sadistic fuck, sassy cyndaquil makes a return
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-09
Updated: 2014-10-09
Packaged: 2018-02-20 12:03:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2428031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flyingllamas/pseuds/flyingllamas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I have to wonder," he said as he considered the cigarette in his hand, rolling it through his fingers, "what killed me, really. Was it my smoking habits? The disagreement with my grandfather? Or did I just really have it coming? I was kind of a major asshole."<br/>"You're still an asshole, Ben," Seth said.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Last of the Summer's Fireflies

**Author's Note:**

> Finally done! See my tumblr for more info.

It was late October, right before Halloween, when Seth decided it was probably safe to take the fan out of their window.

It’d been an abnormally hot year with a summer that refused to die, clinging to late afternoons with its miserably hot fingers well past when the frost should have settled in. Every morning, the grey skies and nip in the air got his hopes up for fall. Every afternoon, without fail, he and his Cyndaquil would end up languishing in front of the fan on the couch with Ben bitching at them for hogging it. Not even the half-death, half-life he lived could save him from the miserable heat, much to his dismay.

(At least he wasn’t alone in his misery though)

It’d been quiet lately, though, when he’d laid back on the couch to escape the heat, and there was silence where there should have been complaints.

 

It was after Halloween when Seth started to worry.

Seth sat restless on the couch, jockeying a battered phone back and forth between his hands and contemplating the unnerving silence of the flat. The Cyndaquil had situated itself comfortably in the entry to Ben’s room and gnawed on a ragged sock with too-sharp teeth (did Cyndaquils even have teeth in the games, he wondered), unchallenged by accusations of being an overgrown rat and thrown objects. That, alone, was cause for concern. Ben hated it when the Cyndaquil blocked the doorway to his room, frequently tripping over it in the early morning.

Of course, it wasn’t uncommon for Ben to just up and disappear without notice. Seth never really questioned it (mostly out of preservation for his own sanity) as he usually reappeared within a week or so, covered in blood and God knew what else. Always, though, there was some smart-ass remark texted to him on the phone Ben insisted he get after the run in with the freak on what he presumed was Mt. Silver. He hadn’t actually mentioned the incident when he shoved the phone at Seth, but the grimace that pulled edges of his lips told Seth all he needed to know. The texts were a, ‘I’m still alive, you’d better not be somewhere I have to drag your ass out of, God knows why I even put up with you.’

(Or something like that, because Seth was never sure what went through Ben’s mind)

This time, there was no text, no word of anything. Ben could take care of himself, that much he was sure of, but the radio silence from someone who was the closest thing he had to a friend in this afterlife disturbed him. At the very least, it did no favors for his overactive imagination, which still plagued him with images of sharp teeth with rotten flesh stuck between them sometimes when he closed his eyes at night.

(When the Celebi’s screams started, he usually awoke to find they were his own, with the Cyndaquil fussing at his feet and a silhouette in the doorway)

With twilight slipping through the newly freed window of the flat, Seth finally got to his feet, slipping his phone into the pocket of the shorts he perpetually wore. The Cyndaquil followed suit, stretching out its legs behind it while yawning, almost like a dog.

“No, you’re not coming with,” Seth told it and it plunked down on its behind and whined. Ignoring it, Seth reached out to the Wi-Fi signal from the restaurant downstairs, pulling himself into the embrace of the Internet. Anymore, with the amount of signals broadcasted everywhere, it wasn’t necessary to have contact with some sort of technology with a connection like it had been back when Seth (and Ben too, he supposed) became what he was.

It wasn’t too hard to find where Ben had gone. Marked bits of data created a clear trail like foot prints, leading deeper into the web and farther and farther away from home. Pulling himself out of the trail’s end at a specific IP address, Seth found himself below a telephone. On it, there appeared to be a router, broadcasting a public signal for whatever area he was in. Sighing in frustration at the somewhat useless location, he looked around.

Growing up in area that, by any definition, was a desert, Seth wasn’t quite sure what to make of his surroundings.

Sure, he’d seen rain (near monsoons) back when he was still alive, when they drowned his neighborhood in the spring, and rain since then as he’d floated in and out of the rapidly expanding Internet, but the neighborhood he stood in now was far out of his frame of reference.

With the grey light that only comes just after the sun has set, he could see water nearly everywhere. It glinted in the streetlights from potholes, the gutters, the cracks of the sidewalk. It looked like liquid fire reflecting orange from the flickering old streetlamps (bulbs far past needing replaced) and if it weren’t for the chill starting to creep in through his hoodie, he would be convinced the smallest bits of water were embers which had flown from the larger pools.

That, and if there weren’t a thick swarm of mosquitoes hovering over each pothole in the street.

Behind him, there seemed to be some sort of park area, with the hum of mosquitos behind him promising even more standing water. In front, there was a line of average houses, some with paint cracked and falling off because of the moisture. A few of the houses had pumpkins still on their porches from Halloween, relatively undisturbed by delinquents and starting to look somewhat soft. All in all, a quiet neighborhood with its inhabitants hiding from the mosquitos and the chill, if it hadn’t been for the man sitting beside a pumpkin on the stairs of the porch of the house directly across from him.

Seth swore under his breath for not thinking of his appearance when popping out of the web. Usually Ben’s choice of venue was significantly more abandoned. However, the man didn’t seem disturbed by his appearance though, or if he was, he didn’t show it. Instead, he just stared, with one eye glazed over and its pupil milky. The man’s white hair and gnarled hands further attested to his age.

Please don’t do something to make me kill you, he thought as he stared back at the man. He’d managed to get this far without killing anyone, sure it was the last step before he’d fall off the cliff into insanity.

(If he wasn’t already insane)

“He’s not here, you know,” the man called across the street, voice soft. “He’s long gone from here, at least. Always pops out there, or at least he has since I moved back, but never stays long. Wish he would.”

Seth stayed quiet, not quite sure what to make of the man, who shakily got to his feet and reached for the cane which leaned against the railing of the porch.

“If you keep going down the street to your right, you’ll find a pretty worn deer path at a dead end back to the lake in the park,” the man continued. “It’s the way he always took, and the way he always wanders off to. I expect you’ll find him there.”

Seth slowly nodded, watching as the man slowly climbed up the stairs to the house. He reached for the handle of the screen door, but looked back at Seth.

“If you find him,” he called back over his shoulder, “tell him he can come back. And that…and that I’m not mad.”

Finally, the man disappeared into the house, the door closing behind him and Seth let out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. He could honestly say that was one of the weirder moments of the last few years (and there’d been quite a few) and despite having a lead on Ben’s location, he had more questions now than he began with. Deciding standing around was getting him nowhere, he decided to follow the old man’s directions.

Sure enough, after a bit of walking, a mud splattered sign proclaimed a dead end and behind it, he could see a well-worn path through the brush. However, his visibility ended not far from where the path started. This was more of what he’d expected from Ben. Ignoring the nervous twisting of stomach, Seth pulled the phone out of his pocket and tried to shine the light of screen onto the path.

Thankfully, the path was mostly level, although it was littered with cigarette butts and shards of broken beer bottles that glimmered in the light of the phone. The bent back or cut branches covered with thick moss told him this was a path that had been much loved for many years, probably by the local high school students if the litter was any indicator. Still, despite its obvious use, Seth felt disturbed. Something wasn’t quite right. It was too quiet, too still for a park that should have still been teeming with life. He wasn’t sure if he was going to be able to help Ben if he’d gotten himself into the level of mess Seth had years and years ago.

He was relieved when the path lead him out of the woods to a small lake lit by the stars and small fireflies skimming over its surface. A somewhat unnecessary dock extended out into the lake and at its end, a hooded figure sat with their feet submerged in the water. Seth carefully approached the dock.

“Ben?” he cautiously called out and the figure’s head snapped around. It was and wasn’t him at the same time. It looked like Ben, but it was like someone had taken the liberty of actually…making him look normal. His hair was its usual mess under the hood, but instead of the golden blonde he was used to seeing, his hair was a muddy dishwater color, somewhere between blonde and brown. His eyes were no longer bleeding, either, and had lost their red pupils.

“Seth, what the fuck?” Ben snapped, blue eyes narrowing in a glare.

“I should be asking you that,” Seth snapped back, walking to the end of the dock and plopping himself down beside Ben, crossing his legs to avoid putting them in the water. “You’ve been gone for a week!”

Ben made a strangled sound.

“I have not been gone for a week!” he insisted and Seth leveled a flat stare at him. Ben swore and drew a phone from the pocket of the navy blue hoodie he was wearing, swearing again when he found it dead. Seth instead presented him with his own phone and watched as the screen illuminated not-Ben’s face. “Okay, so yeah, I’ve been gone for a week. Why did you come after me like a clingy chick?”

“You didn’t text this time,” he said and hurriedly continued before the sneer on Ben’s face could evolve into something nasty, “and you always text. I thought maybe something happened, like when…”

He trailed off, hoping Ben would take the hint so he didn’t have to relive the whole incident. Luckily, he did and the sneer quickly dropped from his face. He handed the phone back to Seth.

“Oh,” he muttered. “Shit. Sorry. I guess I just lost track of time.”

“Doing what?” Seth asked. “And what’s with the…?” He gestured toward Ben’s face. Ben was obviously puzzled for a moment as he ran a hand over his face trying to figure out what Seth was talking about before realization dawned on him.

“Oh, my appearance?” he said, laughing while he pulled back his hood. “What, don’t like Ben au naturale?”

With the hood pulled back, Seth could now see the freckles on his face as well as the Triforce gages in his ears. Typical.

“I guess it’s all related,” he continued. “I never really told you how I died, did I?”

Seth shook his head and Ben sighed.

“I drowned, ultimately,” he admitted, “but I was set on fire before that. Lit by the cigarette I’d been smoking by a bunch of classmates who hated my guts. They’d held me down and dumped gasoline on me and lit me up. I was still alive when they threw me into the lake. Wanted to get rid of the evidence, I guess, not that it did them much good.”

“It’s not a pleasant feeling, drowning, even after you’ve been lit on fire. I would have rather died from the fire than the water. It’s painful at best, but the worst part of it is feeling your lungs fill up with water as you try to catch your breath, feeling so helpless as you sink down to the bottom of the lake…”

He looked back across the lake, falling silent.

“Is this…the lake you drowned in?” Seth hesitantly asked, stomach sinking.

“No,” Ben said, “it’s not. It’s farther from here. Same state, though.”

“Then why are you here?” Seth asked.

“If you’re thinking this is me celebrating the anniversary of my death, it’s not,” Ben told him. “It’s in April. I used to go back to my hometown, but there was too much of a big deal around that time and, ha, it wasn’t all about me. It was also about the people who I took down with me.

“I was a shitty kid who turned into a shitty teenager, Seth. I fought constantly with my parents and smoked weed after school and drank the entirety of my dad’s whiskey when my parents went out of town for a weekend. The thing that really got me in the end, though, is that I liked to fight.

“I was a sadistic little fuck, still am, really, and I might have had a little bit of a masochistic streak in me as well. I was bullied a lot growing up, but I grew meaner than the rest of my classmates as I got older. The fights went both ways, though I was worse than my classmates in the end.  If I was pissed, I’d pick a fight with anyone who looked at me. I’d hold them down and twist their fingers until their bones groaned and they screamed for mercy. They never got it, though. I’d hold my pocket knife to their throats until they begged and pissed their pants in fear.

“The day I died, I’d gotten in a fight the night before with my grandfather over the phone. He’s the one who originally bought me the game, you know. Usually we got along well, but for some reason I can’t even remember, he’d pissed me off and I hung up on him. I’d gone out to smoke a cigarette by the lake in my neighborhood that day after school to try to cool off.  There’s no shortage of lakes in Minnesota, so don’t look that way.”

Ben yanked his feet up from the water onto the dock, causing water pool around his feet as he pulled his knees up to his chest.

“I really deserved it at the time, you know?” he continued, idly running a finger through the water. “They paid me back for every time I made them cry, made them bleed. Of course, even as I burned and screamed myself hoarse, I told myself it wasn’t my fault. I got to watch their guilt when their guilt as they realized I wasn’t quite dead, got to watch as they decided to throw me into the lake to hide their evidence, and all I could think was they weren’t as good at this as I was, which pissed me off even more. I decided on the way down to the bottom of the lake that I’d get those fuckers, one last thing that would make sure they’d never forget me.”

Ben fell silent again, and Seth cleared his throat awkwardly.

“What did you do them?” he asked, and a smile crept onto Ben’s face that made Seth feel like throwing up in the lake. 

(As if Ben’s story wasn’t reminder enough of how fucked up his life was now)

“That’s not really important, is it?” he asked. “But rest assured, all sinners suffer through fire at some point in their existence. Their experience happened...probably a little earlier than the universe intended it.”

Ben drew a pack of a cigarettes out of his jacket pocket and flicked one out with ease before stashing the pack away.

"I have to wonder," he said as he considered the cigarette in his hand, rolling it through his fingers, "what killed me, really. Was it my smoking habits? The disagreement with my grandfather? Or did I just really have it coming? I was kind of a major asshole."

"You're still an asshole, Ben," Seth said. 

Ben gave him a hard look before he burst out laughing. 

“I am,” he admitted as he finally lit the cigarette, “but that’s part of my charm, don’t you think?”

“So why are you even here?” Seth asked as his friend took a long drag, ignoring his comment.

Ben exhaled through his nose and watched as the blue smoke drifted up into the night sky before disappearing.

“My grandpa lives here,” he said. “I like checking on him, still. He always loved Halloween, at least when I was growing up he did, and I guess I like seeing him at least a little happy still, which he usually is around this time of year, at least. He hasn’t done as much decorating the past few years though. I used to do it when he was back in my hometown, too.”

It all clicked for Seth in that moment, and it must have shown on his face because Ben glared.

“You saw him, didn’t you?” he snapped, standing up with his hands curling into fists, with the cigarette still caught between his fingers. “You didn’t say anything to him, did you?”

“N-no!” Seth stammered. “He saw me and told me where to find you! But…”

“But what?”

“He’s the guy that the one guy from the account online met, right?” he asked. “I thought he didn’t have family!”

Ben snorted and took another drag.

“Eloquent, Seth,” he said. “Yes, he is ‘the guy’ from the account that idiot posted online. He moved back into my parents’ house after they split up and left the state. He might as well have claimed to have no family, seeing as I am, technically, dead and my parents stopped speaking to him after I died because they blamed him for pissing me off and ‘causing’ the entire thing.”

He plopped back down onto the dock and sighed, running his free hand through his hair.

“I didn’t know that he knew, though,” he said quietly as he drew his knees up to his chest again and wrapped his arms around them. Seth watched as the cigarette slowly burned ever closer to his fingers. “I should have known, he kept the original cartridge, he moved back and waited for me. Fuck, all these years and I’ve been coming by, never said anything to him. He probably thinks I’m haunting him or something. He probably is fucking pissed that I essentially ruined his life.”

“He doesn’t, though!” Seth blurted out and slapped a hand over his mouth.

(Death had done no favors for his filter)

“And how do you know that?” Ben asked slowly. 

“He, uh, told me,” he said. “After telling me where to find you.”

“Fuck,” was all Ben said at first as he leaned his head down onto his knees, followed by a stream of more profanity.

Seth floundered, distressed.

“I guess I don’t get it,” he told Ben. “Why don’t you just go see him? He wants you to!”

“Because I’ve been a huge fucking idiot, that’s why!” Ben groaned into his legs. Seth watched his friend and sighed internally.

Finally, he made up his mind and clambered to his feet. Ben glanced up at him.

“Come on,” he said, and held out a hand. “You’re going to go see him.”

Ben didn’t take it, so Seth grabbed his arm and hauled his (sort of, kind of) friend to his feet. In the process, Ben dropped his cigarette, which Seth quickly ground out with his shoe.

“Hey, those are hard to get when you’re not exactly alive!” Ben complained as Seth dragged him back towards the trees and away from the lake. “Why are you doing this?”

“Because I’m not going to let you be a fuck-up and waste this opportunity,” Seth said, stumbling as his foot crashed through a surprisingly intact beer bottle. “You still have family who cares, Ben, and if I don’t make you do this, you’re going to bitch and moan about it for the rest of whatever miserable existence we share.”

Throwing caution to the wind, Seth marched them down the street towards the house the old man had been at earlier. By the time they’d reached the porch, Ben had managed to yank his arm back.

“Seth, no,” he said.

“Ben, yes,” Seth answered, and shoved him towards the stairs. Ben stumbled and swore, but reluctantly climbed the steps. He looked back at Seth.

“This isn’t a good idea,” he told Seth.

“You don’t know that,” Seth insisted. “Stop being a wuss.”

“What do I even say?”

“I don’t even think you’ll need to say anything,” he said. “Just ring the doorbell, asshole.”

Ben sighed and fiddled with his jacket, but finally approached the door. Seth took a few steps back.

There were more than a few tense seconds after Ben rang the doorbell in which Seth doubted the old man would actually answer the door. Ben had even thrown him a look over his shoulder that said, “See?” 

He froze, though, when the door cracked open a little before being thrown wide open. Ben and the man stared at each other for a long moment. Finally, though, the man opened the screen door and pulled a very stiff Ben forward into a hug. 

Feeling awkward, Seth stared past them into the house, where he could see a familiar heart-shaped mask portrayed in painting behind the man. He’d never forgotten Ben for a moment, it seemed. 

The man pushed Ben into the house and closed the door behind them, but not before giving Seth a small smile. After staring at the closed door for a moment, Seth reached out for the signal coming from the telephone pole behind him.

Maybe he’d earned himself enough good karma to stay out of trouble for a while. 

Maybe.

(It would never stand if Ben had anything to say about it)

  
  
  
  



End file.
